Prevenient grace is a grace that comes without any effort or “earning” it on the part of humans. It reflects the fact that God takes the initiative to save us through Jesus Christ, and that we don’t earn God’s grace; we can only cooperate with it. To make a connection with Mary, the dogma of her Immaculate Conception (being conceived without original sin and remaining sinless her entire life) is an example of prevenient grace. Ineffabilis Deus, the papal bull written by Pope Pius IX in 1854, explains that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved…

Q: Why is the church so focused on banning contraception when over-crowding and over population is greatly dwindling the earth’s resources?

A: The Church is not trying to “ban contraception” — though given some of the recently media coverage I can understand why someone might think that it is.

The Christian churches have what we call a “closed canon,” meaning that the books contained in the Old and New Testaments — all written by the turn of the first century C.E. — are definitively known as the sum of sacred scripture. So the answer is no; no further books will be added to the Bible.
The Second Vatican Council taught that God chose certain authors to write “whatever he wanted written, and no more.” The purpose of the inspired books is to “teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided in the sacred scriptures.” (Dei Verbum 11) Of course this does not mean that we can’t look to other writings, ancient or modern, to help us understand our faith or our…

Q. There are so many names for God, Allah, Yazad, Harvesp-Tavaan ect. why is my God or your God better than someone else’s God? Who is the true God?
A. It’s not surprising that different cultures of the world in different historic contexts come up with different names for God. Words — names for God — are essentially just pointers to the Divine. Words and their meaning are shaped by culture and historic context. What is significant, though, is that Jews, Christians, Musims, Zoroastrians, all agree that there is only one God. So it is not that my God or your God is better than someone else’s God. It is rather that each religion has the conviction that it has received a special, fuller revelation from…

Q. I got an invitation to a party but am scheduled to work until 10PM. If no customers come in by 9PM can I close up early?
A. Imagine that you are the business owner and think about your question again. Would you want to lose an hour of business just because an employee cut out early for a social engagement? Would you employ someone who is unwilling to work assigned shifts and dishonest about meeting obligations? How would you respond if you found out later that your worker left early without asking permission? You have made a commitment to your employer, just as he or she has made a commitment to pay you for your work. Ultimately you, your boss and the rest of the staff all depend on each other honoring those commitments. It…

No. The words to the song were written by Englishman John Newton, a slave trader, as a response to a powerful conversion experience. After a terrifying storm at sea, Newton realized that it was only by God’s grace that he would be saved; these sentiments later became the basis for the song, which was written in 1772. The Library of Congress website has a good explanation of the story behind this popular hymn.…

The Gospel of Barnabas is an account of the life of Jesus purported to have been written by Jesus’ disciple Barnabas.The only two known manuscripts of the Gospel of Barbabus are dated to the late 16th century and were written in Spanish and Italian. Note that the four gospels included in the Christian Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were all written in Greek in the first century after Jesus’ life, so there is a 15 century gap between them.
The Gospel of Barnabus narrates Jesus’ ministry, much of which it echoes from the four gospels. At other times, however, it contradicts the New Testament accounts and instead leans toward an Islamic interpretation of Jesus’ identity, for instance by describing…

God forgives all sins. So there’s no need to worry about that. The question might be whether this was even a sin. Your husband may have not had intended to kill the person in this encounter and instead acted if self-defense. For something to be sinful, one has to have intent to commit the act and have full knowledge that the act is sinful and then, has to actually carry it out.
In this instance, let’s say your husband had every intention of finding an enemy and killing them. That indeed would be sinful. A good confession would be appropriate (and healthy) for him to share much of the horror of war with God and to ask for forgiveness in his part in the war. War may be necessary and one might be following orders, but…

If by “confession” you mean acknowledgement of wrongdoing and seeking of forgiveness, other religions do have confession. In Judaism, for example, it’s called Teshuva or “repentance”, apology, return, going back to who you are meant to be. Teshuva is the gesture of returning to God, of letting go of your arrogance, your waywardness, your sinfulness and going back to your ultimate Source. It represents the possibility that even the most degenerate sinner can be reunited with God. Teshuvah is the dominant theme during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year, a day of awakening) and Yom Kippur (the day of Atonement and asking forgiveness) in the early Fall.
I was…

The Gospel writers don’t specifically mention the presence of Jesus’ mother at the tomb. Matthew tells us that Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” were at the tomb for Jesus’ burial (Matthew 27:61), and that they both returned to the tomb later and found an angel who informed them that Jesus had risen from the dead (Matthew 28: 1-8). The “other Mary” is not Jesus’ mother, but rather the mother of James and Joseph (see Matthew 27:56). The same two women are present at the tomb in the Gospel of Mark and Luke as well.…

While Catholics believe that human beings are created with free will, we also believe that we grow into the capacity to make use of that free will. Traditionally, we say that around seven years of age a person reaches the “age of reason,” and can begin to make choices for him- or herself. This is why children generally must reach seven years of age before they can participate in the sacraments of Eucharist and reconciliation. We understand that the capacity to make choices is much more limited in a 7-year-old than in a 17-year-old or a 70-year-old. It is non-existent in a child who has not yet been born. An unborn child’s very act of existing is a perfect act of praising God, because simply existing is exactly what…

Like all of the human authors of the Bible, Paul writes from his particular cultural context of life in the first century Roman Empire. He lived in a hierarchical, patriarchal society that presumed the rightness of a woman’s subordination to a man, a child’s subordination to a parent, and a slave’s subordination to a master. In fact, there are several places in the New Testament (Col 3:18-4:1, Eph 5:21-33, 1 Timothy 2:8-15, Titus 2:1-10, 1 Peter 2:18-3:7) where such “household codes” mirror secular lists of the ancient world. We can say that Paul “never tries to change the existing social conditions in the name of Christian teaching” (Joseph Fitzmeyer).
Still, it’s not hard to be puzzled or even…

Interfaith dialogue does not involve being untrue to one’s own convictions of faith. On the contrary, it invites the partners to join together in a common seeking of the truth. In that process, they will share their own understanding in an honest and respectful way. For Catholics, the “uniqueness” and “universality” of Christ are understood to mean that by and in Jesus, God effected a self-manifestation in a manner that is decisive for all and can neither be surpassed or repeated.
The place Jesus Christ occupies in Christianity is central. No other religion attributes such a unique place to its founder. For Islam, Muhammad is the depository of the divine message, the prophet through whom God speaks.…

The Gospel of Matthew explains that Joseph did not know in advance that Mary was destined to be the mother of the Savior. In Matthew 1:18-25, we read about how Joseph and Mary were betrothed, and Joseph discovered that she was pregnant, a discovery which would surely have been a rather rude shock. (The Jewish marriage ceremony had two parts: betrothal, which was a binding exchange of vows in front of witnesses, followed several months later by the husband taking the wife into his house and living with her as a married couple. If Mary was pregnant following the betrothal but before she and Joseph had lived together as man and wife, Joseph would naturally have assumed that she had been unfaithful to him with another man.)…

The Church teaches that the human body, a sacred gift from God, should always be treated with great respect, in life and in death. The way we treat the bodies of the dead is a sign of our hope in eternal life. For most of the Church’s history, this precluded cremation, which was understood as a pagan practice contrary to belief in the resurrection. However, this teaching was revised in 1963. The current Code of Canon Law states: “The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine” (canon 1176, section 3). With permission of the diocesan bishop,…

For centuries, the first five books of the Bible (Genesis through Exodus) were thought to have been written by Moses. However, in the mid-1800s, a scholar named Julius Wellhausen noticed that there were four distinct writing styles among these books and that some stories were told more than once with different language, emphases, and details. For example, there are two distinct creation stories, two versions of the flood, two accounts of God’s covenant with Abraham, etc. This led Wellhausen to hypothesize that there are four primary writers or schools of writers who authored these books. These authors are referred to by the first letter of the names Wellhausen gave them. “J” is shorthand for the writer…

If you think about any statue of a famous person, like a president or general in a park, you know that these statues are usually designed to celebrate the most admirable qualities of that person. You rarely see statues of George Washington looking confused or doubtful, for example; instead, most sculptors make him look confident and commanding, even though we know that he, like anyone, must have had his moments of weakness. Similarly, statues of Mary highlight what the Church has long admired about her: her total willingness to do the work of God and to make herself an instrument of God’s grace to others. That’s why so many images of her show her in an attitude of pious humility, a posture that is meant to indicate…

Do you mean in a fatalistic sense, in which your actions are not actually chosen by you, but rather unfold like a movie playing out on a screen? That idea goes against Catholic teaching with respect to free will. The Church believes that God created human beings with the power to choose: to love or not, to do what is right or not, to follow God or not. And while our choices are constrained by our biology and our circumstances, the fundamental ability to make choices is part of what makes us human. Because we truly have free will, the events of our lives and of history unfold as we choose to make them happen, individually and as a community.
In another sense, however, Catholics believe that the world is in God’s hands and that…

Question: The MidEasterners believe when they die and go to heaven that for every man there will be 7 vestal virgins while the Christians believe that we will be re-united with our deceased loved ones. Someone has to be wrong. I don’t know if someone has to be right. A response please.
Consider that in the gospels Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a great pearl, a handful of yeast and a mustard seed. Does this mean that heaven is, literally, a mustard seed? Of course not. These metaphors help us look toward something that it is beyond what we can imagine. Our descriptions – whether of harp players in choir robes perched on fluffy white clouds (today’s popular conception) or of the sensual paradise…

The first verse in the Letter attributes the writing to “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,” but otherwise the letter gives us no further biographical information on the author. There are a few references in the New Testament to a “James, the brother of Jesus” (a Greek word that can be translated to “cousin”). Perhaps the author of this letter was writing under the authority of this James or “borrowing” the name to give its teaching more weight, a common practice in the ancient world.
James was writing to an organized Christian community. This indicates that it was written later than the letters of Paul because Paul wrote to fairly new, loosely formed, and often mixed communities…